An evaluation of the fairness of police line-ups and video identifications

Mistaken eyewitness identification is a major source of miscarriages of jus tice. In England and Wales, procedures for obtaining identification evidenc e are set out in legislation. The vast majority of identifications are obta ined using a traditional 'live' identity parade (or line-up). However, in s ome circumstances video identifications are being used more frequently. Rec ords of line-ups and video identifications used in actual criminal cases we re obtained. The fairness of these two procedures was compared by use of a mock witness procedure. In a perfectly fair line-up the suspect would be ch osen, by chance, by 11% of the mock witnesses. However, 25% of mock witness es selected the suspect from 25 photographs of live line-ups, compared to 1 5% of mock witnesses who selected the suspect from video identifications. A n analysis of covariance, taking the number of visual features mentioned in the original witness's first description as the covariate, showed that the proportion choosing the suspect was significantly smaller from video ident ifications. It is concluded that the video line-ups were fairer than the li ve line-ups, and therefore that wider use of video identifications has the potential to improve the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.